Super luxe peanut butter butterfly cupcakes
Hey, we’re back! Well, by back I mean a random post…shit got busy…the boys moved house which was traumatic…stupid glass panelled doors (after the third headache I learned to stop running into them).
Head shot for my book cover *werk*
Anyway, I know what you’re thinking…cupcake fucking schmupcake…seen, done, ate many…I agree; but what if *switch to sultry/slutty M&S voice* “These weren’t any cupcakes, these were made with the finest ingredients and flavours from around the world”? (by that we mean the imported food isle in M&S and Harvey Nicks…we aren’t actually going to Ecudador to sniff cocoa beans (we totally should have)).
Super luxe peanut butter butterfly cupcakes (Makes 12)
Gold luster butterflies…we actually gilded the lily.
Chocolate Sponge
- 145g Tate & Lyle: Fair Trade Golden Caster Sugar
- 150ml Merchant Gourmet: Almond Oil
- 170g McDougals: “00” Flour
- 35g Green and Blacks: Cocoa Powder
- 1 tsp Baking Powder (You find a luxury version. You can’t? Shut up fuck up then)
- 1/2 tsp Cornish Sea Salt Co.: Fine Sea Salt
- 2 Duck Eggs (All duck are tremendously luxurious)
- 170ml Total Greek Yoghurt: Full Fat
- 1 Ndali: Vanilla Pod
- A few spoons of Gold Top Jersey Milk
Modelling Chocolate
- 200g Hotel Chocolat: Hacienda Iara 100% Dark
- 100g The Tasmanian Honey Company: Leatherwood Honey
Peanut Butter Frosting
- 100g Kerrigold Butter
- 100g Koeze: Cream-Nut Crunchy Natural Peanut Butter
- 200g Tate & Lyle: Fair Trade Icing Sugar
- A few spoons of Gold Top Jersey Milk
Directions…pay attention!
Modelling Chocolate
- Melt the chocolate
- Stir in the honey
- Wrap in cling film and whack in the fridge
- When cool, kneed, roll out and cut into shapes (or make into penises, literally minutes of amusement)
Cakies
- Pre-heat oven to 180ºc
- Mix oil with caster sugar until sugar starts to dissolve a bit
- Mix in vanilla pod seeds and eggs until creamy
- Mix in flour, salt, baking powder and cocoa
- Stir through the yoghurt
- If the mixture doesn’t fall off a spoon add a splash of milk
- Fill cake cases half full and push in a disk of modelling chocolate
- Bake for 18–20 minutes
- Cool on a wire rack (important! If you leave them in the tin they keep baking; the wire gives their bottoms a nice breeze)
Frosting
- Beat butters together
- Mix in icing sugar with a splash of milk (it stops you getting a nose full of white powder *looks innocent*)
- Loosen with a little more milk so it’s smooth and can be piped (any extra can go straight in the mouth).
Assemble
Really, if you need directions, how are you working the Internet…or breathing? But for the sake of thoroughness…
- Cake=Bottom Frosting=Middle Chocolate=Top …a human centipede of deliciousness
- Do not eat until fully assembled (maybe we ate a few too many butterflies as the cakes were cooling…don’t judge me)
Was it worth the hassle and expense of using top end shit?? Ermahgerd! Totally!
The sponge was light, moist and rich. The frosting was deliciously nutty and not gaggingly cloying (nutty? gagging? behave…pervert). The modelling chocolate melted in the mouth; the combo of the fruity, nutty Iara and spicy, sweetness of the Leatherwood honey was fucking mind-blowing…the pieces in the cakes melt and become a sticky, chewy nuggets of joy.
The best review of this bake was Mykie being told by a straight man “If I were gay, I’d marry you.”
So cake awesomeness! With great power comes great responsibility…don’t blame us if you are inundated with offers of marriage or sexy times…use these cakes wisely.
Where’s my fucking cake bitch?
Laters,
Secret Snatch Cakes
So baking, yeah we’ve not for a while…
But there are reasons! Good, good reasons! (well, some reasons)
Basically, the boys got totally caked out…they’d rammed in so many tarts and financiers they were actual cake boys.
So, we’ll be posting the wedding/birthday/barmitzva cakes but if you’re looking for some shitty cupcake variants it’s probably best to piss off now.
So what is this about?
Well…sometimes baked stuff is not just for shits and giggles. Sometimes it is totally NECESSARY!
Because we eat a plateful off the floor next to the kettlebells…not on the sofa watching Grey’s Anatomy.
Mykie was competing in a kettlebell lifting competition (I know, random, rite?) with two events split hours apart.
Mykie is a fussy eater and gets totally hangry. (like The Hulk but little, less verdant, more gay, more hair product)
Feed me or this kettlebell is heading straight at your head.
With stuff to do at a comp…like cheer, warm up, gossip…let’s not even mention the time for costume changes… (you get totally sweaty and who wants to stay marinating in their own juices?) well the point is there is no time to pop out for an egg white omelette and a Harvey Nick’s breakfast martini, is there?!
So plans people, you gotta have the plans!
The high protein, portable, sweet treat…SECRET SNATCH CAKES!
Right, let’s be real, these aren’t going to rock your world or anything but they are so easy, a bit delicious, filling and don’t require refrigeration (anyone else chomped on a pack of warm chicken? Samonellicious!). Kettlebell lembas!
Snatch Cakes
- 70g When Protein (we use optimum nutrition vanilla ice-cream flavour (fucking delicious))*parenthesis within parenthesis? living on the edge at Wondercat*
- 30g Wheatgerm
- 2 Eggs
- 50g Peanut butter (the good shit, at least 97% peanut with no added sugar)
- pinch o’ salt
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 10g flour of some description
- Xantham gum IF REQUIRED (if you are using gluten-free flour you’ll know the deal)
- sweetener to taste (make sure it’s one that can be baked with!)
- splash of milk
- beat peanut butter and eggs
- stir in everything else
- if it’s really thick and goopy, add a bit more milk
- plop it into some kind of muffin/cupcake tins
- bake at 150ºC for between 12 and 20 minutes depending on the size of your baking, erm…holes?
These are our small holes. I can totally get my face in them.
That is it. You can’t really go wrong…well you can… We used super tiny silicone block moulds so 12 minutes was long enough…we made a batch and baked them longer and they were so dry and claggy they sucked your face in like a raisin…so don’t over bake.
OK, who ate my shit before the pics were taken?
Laters!
Quick Bake: What’s better than men and chocolate?
So hello and happy new year!! We trust you gobbled more than your fair share of festive goodies over the holidays?
ooh, a pedestal compote of men…never said that before.
Maybe like us, you are now into January, full of good intentions of healthy eating…but let’s face it…it don’t feel good does it? The feelings of temperance and virtue from your steamed chicken salad don’t quite compare to the memories of the bucket of Lindt reindeer you scoffed. It’s time to give yourself a little, tiny break and treat yourself. We’re not going crazy now, just a little somin’ somin’ to take the edge off! How about a batch of tiny delights from Christmas leftovers and larder scraps (yes, we are full of domestic smugness). So ladies and gays, how do you like the sound of a mouthful of hot, spicy, chocolate man parts?
Hot and spicy chocolate men bites
that’s it baby, climb down and dance for me
- 40g butter
- 20g dark chocolate with orange
- 20g dark chocolate with chilli
- 25g caster sugar
- 33g plain flour
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 tsp mixed spice
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- Melt the chocolate and butter (we microwaved it (slowly, don’t blame us if you blow the thing up and burn your house to the ground))
- Whisk the egg and sugar until light and pale
- Fold everything into the egg mix.
- Pour into little silicone moulds
- Bake at 170ºC for about 10 minutes
A little bite of something nice! Fuck the rice crackers and carrot sticks. This is really quite an awesome recipe that makes a little batch so even if you go a bit Christina Aguilera and eat the lot, it’s not too much of a crisis…more clinging on to the side of the wagon than falling off face first in the horse shit and dirt.
wrapped up for Chads…if that doesn’t work as a hint for some hot, hot lovin’, we’re gonna have to invest in a cream filled cock mould.
So on that pleasant note, good luck with any resolutions and 2013 plans!
Laters!
The Mykivity
Tis the season for telling baby birthing stories…
Jurassic Jesus
Sit yourself down, grab a mince pie…actually lets start again… Get your ass to the kitchen, make some mince pies, now sit down with a pie and glass o’ port as we begin…
Sprinkle with cocoa and icing sugar before baking and top with a gold dusted fondant leaf…delightful!
It was a cold, dark night when the virgin (ha!) Linda pissed on a stick.
The plastic, urine soaked rod glowed a heavenly blue as it told her “you’re going to have a baby”.
“Dave! Dave! I have been told that in 9 months we are to have a baby!”
“So November? I knew I gave you a proper good one on Valentines” proclaimed an ecstatic David.
So, later that year, Dave and Linda made the 10 minute journey across Widnes, riding on a Ford Capri.
They arrived at Highfield Hospice where the midwife told Linda she would soon be with child.
“He will be called the Baby Michael!” Announced Linda. “Michael, after some hot guy from a TV show as I’ve realised naming him Marc after Marc Bowlan may not auger well.”
But, the joyous night did not last long…
After many uncomfortable hours a midwife approached Linda to tell her “There is no room in the vagina!”.
A new light appeared in the night sky. It was the flashing of an ambulance which had come to carry Linda and the partially crowned Baby Mykie to a manager in Whiston Hospital.
Doctors bearing gifts of gas, forceps and air paid their respects to the half-born Baby and delivered him into his mothers arms via C-section.
“All hail the new Baby Michael!”
“I know he is a special baby” said Linda. “He has a pointy head and is a bit yellow!”
“That’s because he got stuck in your lady tunnel and is half Chinese” barked the slightly racist nurse.
After treatment for jaundice, Linda and David took their cone-headed prince home to Widnes.
After that delightful tale you may have gone off your pies…but if you still want a gobble, here’s our recipe for sweet short crust pastry as a variation on our previous pies.
Sweet Shortcrust Pastry
- 225g plain flour
- 60g butter, softened
- 40g vegetable fat (trex)
- 25g caster sugar
- pinch o’ salt
- 1 egg, beaten
- tsp vanilla extract
- splash of milk if needed
- Rub fats into flour
- Stir through salt and sugar
- Cut through egg, ancillary and milk (if needed) with a butter knife until mixture comes together
- Press into a smooth ball, flatten and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes
This pastry is so easy to work with and rolls nice and thinly. It has a beautiful crunch yet melts in the mouth…perfection!
We will refrain from making comments about being rammed full of meat.
Have a very merry Christmas!!! Love Wondercat!
Pissedmas Quake
Hello hello hello…
So, like Reese’s Pieces, Turduckens and erm…Captain Planet…good shit can come from smooshing stuff together…and who doesn’t love a portmanteau???
Here at Wondercat we have been learning to quill with paper…could we combine quilling and caking??? Do we dare?
We done dared did!
So here’s this years cake, unveiled at the annual Chadong Christmas Champagne Soiree…
The cake was basically based on Delia’s cake ratios but with tropical fruits and coconut…I won’t be adding coconut again as it make the cake crumbly like Cheshire cheese.
The white quilling we were very happy with…the black, not so much. The black petal paste was a bit dry so didn’t roll as nice or smoothly.
But still, quilling + cake = QUAKE! To be eaten with a spork.
Oh and why we are going down this cabbit hole…
a few of my favourites…
Tranma
Crapkin
Brony
Minja
Woon
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!!
Wondercat Christmas: Mo Farah Mince Pies
Hello! It’s totally Christmas time!
Here at Wondercat we’ve been fabulizing the tree and decking the halls…the season has us in its tinselly grasp!
This weekend called for a bit of festive munchables, but, to be honest, we were more about the eating than the baking…time to whip up some lightening fast mincemeat and turn it into pies…so bloody scrumptious they’ll make you throw your arms wide and pull the “Farah face”!
Yes Mo, they’re that good.
Mo Farah Mince Pies
Pretty shot huh? We were simultaneously holding the plate in front of the tree and photographing…life behind the curtain ain’t so glamorous!
Mincemeat
equal weights of:
- Dried fruits of various kinds-Plump raisins? A sour cherry perhaps? Christmas craisins? How about some candied peel? Throw caution to the wind, live on the edge, do it for Baby Jesus!
- Cooking apples-peeled and chopped into little bits…not the cores, dumbass!
quarter weight of:
- Brown sugar
- Ginger beer
- Butter
- Almonds, toasted and chopped
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- Brandy, or some other delightful booze
- Lemon zest
- Orange zest
So, the equation for mincemeat is as follows (food algebra, brain food):
(4x(fruit+apple)+x(sugar+beer+butter+almonds)+spice+zest+booze)-bakers scoffing privileges
Just call me (P)Einstein! *We know, we know, total cracker joke right? Speaking of cracker jokes we heard THE BEST today…ready for this??! “How does King Wenceslas’ like his pizza?” We’ll pop the answer at the bottom of the post…worth every second of scrolling, we promise you!*
Back to the mince meat…
- Just throw everything in a big ol’ pan (except the brandy and nuts) and boil away until the apples have turned mushy.
- Let it cool for a while then stir in the almonds and as much booze as you can without making it a big sloppy mess…we got a good few glugs in let me tell you! *we had also been drinking the booze so were dancing around in just our pants singing Nicky Minaj…sometimes life calls for a semi-nekkid Minaj moment*.
- Throw it into sterilised jars or as we did, a big lock ‘n’ lock tub and store it in the fridge.
Pastry
- 200g plain flour
- 100g butter-cut into cubes
- couple of tbsp of lemon juice
- pinch o’ salt
- tsp vanilla extract
- Rub butter into flour and salt until breadcrumby
- Cut in lemon juice and vanilla extract with a butter knife until it starts to come together…and a bit of water if needed but not too much…if it’s a big wet mess then you have fooked it up.
- Bring it together into a ball, squish it flat, wrap in cling-film and whack in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. *We used this time to go at the mincemeat with a spoon*
Roll out pastry to 2mm…get a Joseph and Joseph adjustable rolling pin http://www.josephjoseph.com/kitchen-tools/adjustable-rolling-pin as they are AWESOME! Cut out little frilly circles just a little bigger than the pie holes *pie hole *sniggers**
Use some sort of blunt poking device…a little rolling pin, a spatula handle, a dildo… to push the circles down.
Mince them up!
Cut stars the size of the pie holes out of the pastry scraps…DON’T RE-ROLL…it’ll taste like shit!
Plop on a star…oh and I know I totally need a manicure so pipe down Judgey McJudgerson!
- Bake at 175C for 20 minutes until the mincemeat is bubbling and the oven stink o’ Christmas.
- Sprinkle with icing sugar then enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!
These pies are tiny, hardly a pie at all. They are actually closer to mini tarts but who has a mince tart? It would be like renaming the iPad mini the iPhone big. Any who, they are a perfect little morsel for a mouthful of Christmas cheer; like Mo Farah and gold medals you can have them all! *Mo probably didn’t eat his gold medals with a glass of wine watching Strictly…but maybe he did? Who knows?*
That’s right kids, go on! Eat all the pies…then bake more and eat them too!
It’s Christmas time!!!!
The moody ambience of a fragrance ad…”Smell like dessert, drive the chubby kids wild…Pie the new fragrance from Wondercat.”
Oh yeah, the joke…”Deep pan, crisp and even!” We laughed until snot shot from our nose…It doesn’t take much to tickle a Wondercat.
Wondercat is back baking! Chocolate Peanut Popcorn Cake
Well hello, long time no see!
Where exactly have we been for a year you may be asking…or not.
We thought we’d play it safe for a good few months and hole up in the Wondercat Apocalypse Bunker-just in case the world turned to shit or something…luckily, Obama is still president…bazinga!
OK, that may have been a lie. Baking and then writing about baking takes a fair bit of time and dedication…after not hearing from the Great British Bake Off we got a little bit meh about the baking thing…did you watch it BTW??! OMG we were soooooo Team Brendan! If that man doesn’t do drag cabaret at the weekend I’ll eat my litter tray. In the end, the best gay won I suppose. The closest we’ve come to baking recently has been making these Halloween delights…
secret 5-a-day
It was Mr Whitworth’s birthday so Team Chadong decided to cook for him…the boys asked me to whip up a little something for dessert. The concept is based upon an after dinner truffle the Chadongs had at the Lucullo Terrace – a dark chocolate truffle with finely ground popcorn in it…fucking amazing! Oh, and after dinner the boys ran into our baking idol Eric Lanlard in the hotel! Maybe Mykie was a little tipsy and a touch starstruck and perhaps pestered the poor man for an autograph (whilst pulling out a camera?! replace tipsy with ridiculously shit-faced)…the shame! Hang your head boy!
Eric must have been able to smell the dozen vanilla Martinis Mykie had guzzled…Mykie has the face of someone desperately trying to appear less drunk than they are…comedy.
Anyways, enough chatter…
CHOCOLATE PEANUT POPCORN CAKE
so that’s why horizontal stripes make you look fat.
Sponge
- 240g SR Flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 105g unsalted butter, room temp
- 105g whole nut peanut butter
- 340g golden caster sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 185ml buttermilk
- Line a 6 inch *winks* round cake tin and whack the oven on to 170ºC
- Beat the butters and sugar together
- Add the eggs one at a time
- Alternate between folding in 1/3 of the dry ingredients then 1/3 of the buttermilk with the vanilla extract in it
- Bake for about 1 hour until a pokey stick comes out clean (you know the cake testing drill by now)
Ganache
- 150g 70% dark chocolate
- 150ml double cream
- 50g peanut butter
- Ok we were totally lazy and just stuck the lot in a bowl, microwaved it for 40 seconds until the chocolate had started to melt and whisked the shit out of it as it cooled…job done.
Icing (not frosting, Rule Britannia!)
- 50g popping corn
- 50g butter, room temp
- good pinch o’ sea salt
- 50g icing sugar
- 250ml whipping cream
- the left over ganache from the filling
- Pop the popcorn (sooo much fun!) then blitz it to a powder and toast the powder in the oven until erm, toasted?!
- Beat the butter, sugar salt and popcorn powder until smooth
- Whip the cream to soft peaks
- Re-whip the ganache until lighter and fluffier
- Fold the ganache into the butter stuff and then fold in the cream
Decoration
- Popcorn
- Peanuts
- 50g caster sugar
- 1 tbsp water
- pinch o’ sea salt
- Toast the peanuts and pop the corn
- Make a caramel by heating the sugar and water
- Pour caramel over nuts and corn and swish it all about…careful, the caramel is hot (We may have burned ourself by stuffing it into our pie hole before it cooled)
Assembly
- Slice top off cake to level (cake spoils! munch away!)
- Cut remaining cake into 3 equal layers
- Spread a layer of the ganache in each layer then chill in the fridge for about 10 minutes
- Cover cake with icing and smooth sides
- Pipe remaining icing around top and bottom edges
- Pile up popcorn/nut/caramel mix into a mountain of deliciousness in the centre of the cake
- Sprinkle on a pinch of sea salt
The cake went down well with Team Whitworth! The mixture of squishy cake and crunchy popcorn was delightful…It tasted like the bastard child born from the erotic encounters of a gateaux and a chocolate bar. The Vanilla Duck could indulge as we’d used lactose free dairy ingredients…Wondercat is sooo very considerate of dietary needs (apart from those fucking vegans…oh and we’ll throw vegetarians under the bus as well).
Not the most refined looking thing we’ve baked but it was fucking tasty!
rotating the cake makes vertical stripes…which we all know are slimming.
So that’s it for now folks…I think we’re going to try for a regular bake schedule…possibly every two weeks? Our old schedule of twice weekly was frankly, fucking insane…cake lying around everywhere, cake coming out of peoples noses, hiding cake down the back of the sofa…
See you soon!
The “Miss Ayesha”
Hey kids! So you may (or may not) have noticed we’ve been a bit posting-lite of recent…
Well the thing is, we have a job, and a life and grown-up stuff and erm…Skyrim, so Wondercat has been demoted to “when we have some time spare”. Soooooo, having the week before Easter off work and a new kitchen on the verge of completion means it’s time to crack open the self-raising and turn the Kitchenaid up to 5!
cock-a-doo-de-licious
It was our dear friend, the fabulous Miss Ayesha’s birthday so what better way for the new kitchen to lose it’s cake-ginity? (It beats drunk on a Saturday night with a dodgy batch of cupcakes…oh, we went to our bitter place of regret again)
Miss A requested a chocolate and cinnamon flavoured cake…she also mentioned a colour scheme but we sort of disregarded that and free-styled…we wanted to make something like the lady herself; striking, glamorous, exquisite and sophisticated.
Behold the “Miss Ayesha”!
a pretty bird for a...
We can’t take all the design credit as it is based on a design we found on Google University…but I think ours is prettier!
a close up of my cock
The cake was a chocolate, cinnamon sponge with a touch of ginger and nutmeg…it was nice and moist due to our new Wondercat sponge recipe (the secret ingredient: Dairy Milk Philly!)! It was split in to three layers and filled with Fortnum & Mason marmalade, a chocolate ganache (75% cocoa) then glazed with a maraschino and cinnamon syrup before coating with vanilla flavoured fondant.
We used white fondant which was painted on top in gold mixed with a bit of yellow (it did dry the icing a little making it crack a bit…something to work on), the sides were painted in red mixed with fuchsia lustre and the piping work was a dark brown royal icing using size 1, 1.5 and 2 piping tips.
still pretty upside down!
Hopefully we’ll get a chance for some Easter baking (we are itching to make some hot Atheist “A” buns) and manage to post about them…but Alduin ain’t going to kill himself.
Laters!
Biscuits and bears…
So, we have been less with the baking and more with the making…
The boys have got a little caked out so baking has been cut back to bare minimum…or “bear” minimum…(yeah, that was terrible…go ahead, leave this website, don’t come back.)
do not eat
SO, the bear thing…we’ve been NEEDLE FELTING!!! You sort of jab un-spun wool with a needle until it turns into stuff…or you jab the bejesus out of your finger…hurts like a bitch but you’d think it was a hot coffee enema from the way we were screaming.
We needed snacks for the stichin’ ‘n’ bitchin’…making stuff really works up an appetite (ok, no it doesn’t, we are just greedy)
Black Sesame and Hot Ginger Honey Cookies
tip: put ugly biscuits on a gorgeous plate
- 130g Plain Flour
- 20g skimmed milk powder
- 40g Black sesame seeds
- 80g Budder
- 80g Caster Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
- 2 tbsp Honey
- rub together the dry stuff until crumby
- stir through the honey then bring together into a dough ball
- roll out and cut out
- bake 160ºC for 15-20 mins
These were yummy, the cayenne really fires up the ginger and the smoky sesame brings it nicely together like a sweet buddery oral bonfire!
it's like some weird cookie maypole dance
They got strangely super hard over night so these are probably “scoff the batch” cookies which is not the biggest upset in the history of the world.
12 down 4 to go
Now back to the making stuff…we have been making Micro-Bears!
Macrocephaly: makes things cuter
Cuteness!
a lot cuter than the bloody stumps that are our fingers...needle felting is an extreme sport
We want to see just how small we can get them!
a penny for scale...do you know how long it took to fit a decent looking penny?
Wondercat Bakery 